Wednesday, 16 December 2009

20 Best Albums of the Decade: #14

14. Clare and the Reasons, The Movie (2007)

With The Movie, Clare Muldaur and her band the Reasons crafted an album of songs that, simply put, defied easy categorization— while many (such as “Cook for You” and “Love Can Be a Crime”) were, musically, an homage to the 1930s, those same songs were brought into the present by Muldaur’s strikingly modern lyrics. Nowhere was this contrast more evident on opener “Pluto”, which lamented Pluto’s loss of planetary status over glittering strings and plucked double bass, and the quiet despair of “Science Fiction Man”. While jazz and its many variations entered the pop and indie worlds throughout the 2000s, few indie albums explored the personal and cinematic sides of the genre as successfully as The Movie.